Evaluation of the Local Site Effects and Their Implication to the Seismic Risk of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Old City of Dubrovnik (Croatia)

ABSTRACT

UNESCO World Heritage Site Old City of Dubrovnik (Croatia) has been devastated by historical earthquake in 1667 of M ~ 7 as well 1979 M6.8 Montenegro earthquakes causing strong damage effects. The aim of this research is the evaluation of the geological structure and local site effects under the Old City, using non-invasive seismic survey methods to define the areas that can be subjected to stronger damage in the case of an earthquake. The results present basis for seismic hazard and seismic risk assessment of cultural heritage – which are necessary activities for their preservation as an important witness of the past.

KEYWORDS:

• UNESCO
• cultural heritage
• Dubrovnik (Croatia)
• earthquakes
• Local site effects
• seismic microzonation

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Prof. Zoran Milutinovic, who left us too soon, for constructive discussions, advices and suggestions. His spirit and charisma will accompany our work in future. The authors would like to thank to Assist. Prof. Dr. Mario Gazdek, Iva Lončar and Jakov Stanislav Uglešić for their help with microtremor and geophysical measurements. This work has been supported by the Croatian Science Foundation (project ‘Seismic Risk Assessment of Cultural Heritage Buildings in Croatia’, HRZZ IP-2020-02-3531) and in part from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 (project ‘Investigation of Seismically Vulnerable Areas in Croatia and Seismic Ground Motion Assessment’, 04-UBS-U-0002/22-90). We would like to thank to the City of Dubrovnik, especially the Mayor Mato Franković and Ivo Cvjetković from the Administrative department for city property for the help with organizing microtremor and geophysical measurements in the Old City area. Institute for Reconstruction https://zod.hr/) provide us with all older investigations from 1980s and permitted their use (data, maps, figures) for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [DS], upon reasonable request.